Thursday, July 23, 2015

One of the realities of working on geographically-disbursed teams is you need a group calendar to help keep track of where everyone is (and who's out on vacation, training, etc.). The one weird thing I've noticed is that many of my co-workers, when posting their PTO days, indicate _where_ they're taking their PTO.

When I see the "where" notation, all I can think is, "that's nice, but why did you feel the need to post that detail?" Are you trying to demonstrate "I'm someplace that I can't really help you even if you do try to call me?"

I mean, you're on vacation. It shouldn't be the business of anyone on the team where you are. Set your Out of Office on your mail account and hit the road. Don't check your mail. Don't answer your phone (the latter is easy if, like me, the only number you give people is GV - since GV's really good at enforcing contact-hours and you can always set a group-level "I'm on vacation" voicemail greeting). BE on vacation.